Everything Lamont Paris said after South Carolina's loss to Georgia

Following South Carolina’s 75-70 loss against Georgia on Saturday, head coach Lamont Paris spoke to the media about the game. Here’s everything he had to say.

Opening statement

“Alright, tough loss there against a really good team, athletic team. A team that plays hard. They’re well-coached, they’ve got a really good coach. I respect what Mike White does in this league as much as anybody. He’s a veteran. I thought our effort was really good. I thought our defensive effort in particular was really good. There’s a lot of things that have to happen in order to win a game, particularly against a really talented team.”

“One of those happened: we defended at a high enough level. There were some mistakes and some fat you can trim off of that, sure, but this is not a game of perfection. I thought we did a pretty good defensively overall, holding a team like that 23 points under their average, what they were averaging when they came into the game. They’ve been over 100 so many times, that’s just what they do. I thought execution of our strategy defensively was good, we had a bunch of looks down the stretch, and throughout the game.”

“We could’ve played better offensively, performed better, I should say. The way we played I thought was pretty good, overall offensively. We just had a couple guys that didn’t perform the way that we needed to. And there’s this equation that’s if this thing’s good this day, or bad this day, this thing’s got to be good this day, and today was a day we probably needed to make all our free-throws. We’ve been a good free-throw shooting team, it just wasn’t that day. I liked some of the things that I saw with our team, particularly on the defensive end. Just frustrating to put yourself in position to win and not win.”

Lamont, you guys took an eight-point lead with about eight minutes to go, called a timeout and got out Myles and put in Christ, what was the strategy behind that move?

“Myles was tired, he’d been in for a long time. They also I think subbed in Somto Cyril at that time. That was a good lineup for us. We were getting a lot of things done. Often times when you put a “big” big out there, they’re not as skilled. And then you have a smaller big maybe that’s more skilled. We’re trying to figure out what we’re going to do. And they had, as they pulled Somto out, they were not quite as big, and also still not quite as skilled.”

“So I thought we could play small, we were playing small. We had Myles and Mike in there as our forwards. Offensively, allowed us to do a lot of things, we’ve just got to rebound while you’re out there. Could’ve tried it with Somto in there but he was pretty effective even when we had our bigs in there. When you’re outsized that much, it’s difficult. But that was the main thing, he came in right out of the timeout, and Myles had been in there for a long time, so it just made sense to us to put Christ in there.”

Over those final eight minutes, when you guys have the lead, what will be the main thing that stands out to you as why you guys weren’t able to close out this game, compared to when you guys did it and finished really well against LSU?

“I’ll have to watch it to see what some of the specific things we did defensively were, but just things I know off the top of our head, if I look at this stretch, and these are things that I remember specifically, not to call anyone out, but these are just plays that I remember. I know Meechie got a wide-open three. Elijah had an open three. Elijah passed up an open three and then threw to Meechie for an open three. Myles had an open three in the corner. Kobe was at the basket and we threw like a little lob and he caught it and missed it right at the rim. We ran a hammer play to Myles in the corner for a wide-open three. Even down to Mike’s layup at the very end, we missed.”

“We got none of those to happen. All those plays I just said all happened in the last whatever amount of time was, I don’t want to make something up but I remember they happened in succession and that led to a stretch where we weren’t scoring while they were. We fouled them some, but I don’t know how many free throws they shot, even. They’re averaging 22 makes per game, so I assume it was under that.”

“I think that was it, the main thing, we had a bunch of plays, and it got that way in the LSU game a little bit, but then Elijah made a big play, two actually, around the basket, and he got a similar shot in this game that rolled around and then came out. You need that one. The guys need that one to say “eight turned to six, six turned to four,” whatever that is, let’s play that for this one possession, versus six stays at six, so then the score goes to eight, and now we got to have something down here. So you get a little tighter when you get the wide-open three. I think that was probably that, right off the top of my head, stands out as to what potentially caused the differential towards the end of the game.”

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What did you see and what explanation did you get on the flagrant that they called on Kobe, and they had already started cutting into the lead some but they went on a 6-0 run after that, did that swing any momentum at all or kind of keep it in their favor?

“As you look at the game, and how the game turned out, that’s a significant thing that happens. It’s a tricky situation because there’s doing something intentionally, there’s accidental, and there’s incidental. And the difference between the two, there’s a chasm between accidental and incidental. As far as those plays are concerned, I’m not sure how I always can separate those two.”

“Kobe’s was explained that it was excessive contact to the neck and face area. The one with Eli was described as completely incidental. What I asked, for my own benefit, was ‘if Kobe does not know the screener is there,’ which he doesn’t, “and he’s making a normal basketball move to get through the screen,’ and then the screener is there, with no intent whatsoever, no knowledge even that the guy is actually there, what’s the difference between that? That’s accidental, certainly that’s accidental. What makes that non-incidental and then the other one was deemed incidental?”

“My quick judgment, and I saw them only briefly, was that the impact of Eli’s was more significant in terms of overall force. That Eli’s was more impactful. Both of them completely accidental, to me both of them completely incidental. I’m not that sure of the difference between those two things, being completely honest with you.”

Lamont, you talked about defense, keeping them well under their scoring average today, but also chasing loose balls, preventing turnovers, and keeping them from getting out in transition, you talked about how important that would be, what was your assessment of that?

“For the most part, good. They’re good at what they do. I don’t want to say we strategized our way to some sort of…but we had a pretty basic idea of what we wanted to do. For example, we got one ten-second call, and the goal was to have zero, because they get a lot of ten-second calls. Just, you have some indecision, we had a couple of triggers that we knew made us say, ‘you have to step on the gas to get the ball to half-court at this point,” we did some things that I think helped our guys. I think we did a pretty good job of that. A lot of that’s on the offensive end, just taking care of the ball, not taking shots that are unexpected. You can take a quick shot, that people assume is going to be shot. We did that some.”

“But the unexpected shot just turns into a runout for a team like them. Thought we did a pretty good job overall of that. I thought we did a pretty good job guarding, staying in front of the ball, not to flip it to defense but really talented players oftentimes are so talented that they have Plan A, which is to make a good move and go by you, and it works often for them. But Plan B yields a more difficult shot. They’re so good, they believe in themselves so much, that they’ll take the difficult shot. And they’ll make it sometimes. But the numbers over the years have proven that they don’t go in quite as much. Our basic philosophy when it comes to stuff like that.”

You mentioned earlier some of the pros and cons of playing a smaller lineup that you did, and you guys got up eight, I want to ask about, specifically on the defensive side of the ball, what do you guys need to do defensively when you get into those lineups to avoid things like lobs?

“In that lineup, I think they only got one lob. I could be wrong on that, this is just off the top of my head. What that lineup allowed us to do, and why this was a different, not that we would have gone to it or needed to for most of the game in the LSU game, but one difference, too, is how much of an offensive impact does the big typically have? And so one thing we were able to do during that stretch, we were switching on ball-screens. In reality, I’d have to go back. I don’t want to say something that’s not accurate, my guess is they got less off the actual ball-screen in that time.”

“Now we were switching one time and Eli, he chased hard over the screen and it was a tough scenario and he was not able to get back to the switch quick enough and they got a lob on that one. But it does, did afford us the opportunity to switch some of the ball-screen stuff when you have guards like that that can get downhill. In fact, two of Elijah’s fouls came from a guard getting downhill and drawing a foul on him. I think that’s one thing you can help alleviate, the ball-screen.”

“We fronted one time and they didn’t throw the lob in there, so you have to rebound. That’s one thing. You’ve got to have some guys that’ll rebound if you’re going to be able to do that. And then you have to be getting paid off on the offensive end, which in today’s game we were. Aside from them putting Somto back in there, we also had some guys that had been in there for a long time. Myles had been in there for a long time. It was time to freshen that lineup up anyway. That was probably the key to us doing it, the catalyst was that they were bringing Somto back in.”

Eli, 12 shots today, the most he’s taken so far this season, is it more of a flow-of-the-game thing, is that him learning, more green lights in practice, how does he get to that today?

“Some of it was they were playing aggressive brand of basketball. When you’re trapping, there’s a lot of unpredictable offense that happens when you press and you’re trapping. Myles gets an open three across from their bench, completely unpredictable play that happens. Eli thrives in a lot of those situations, so I think that was one thing. Then he got to feeling good about himself, and then I called a play for him to get around the basket, and they fouled him on a post-up.”

“I think it’s a little bit of everything. Learning where your spots are, not spots on the floor but your spots to attack based on what the defense is doing. I want him to be aggressive. He’s an aggressive-minded guy, I want all of our guys to be aggressive. Typically, when he is aggressive, more good things happen than bad things. We bet on that.”

“He was aggressive, I think there were more opportunities that presented themselves just based on how they were playing defense, and then during that stretch I don’t know how many we shot during that stretch where we were playing small, but the floor was extremely open because their five-man then had to guard either Mike or Myles. So no five-man was just standing around the block the whole time, so that opened up things for the guys that wanted to attack aggressively. He was one of them.”

Today, you won a challenge. Are you comfortable with that system, have you sort of figured out, ‘hey, I’ve got these challenges, I can use them when I want but I have to be thoughtful about when I use them?’

“That one, and it could have gone the other way. But I had a good view of it myself. I thought the timing of it, based on what was happening during the game, we needed that to happen for us, I thought. Sometimes that’s the component that makes you pull the trigger on it, other times maybe it’s just a back-and-forth normal deal, and you’re like ‘alright, I’ve got to save one for towards the end,’ let’s say when Mike could’ve had the steal at the end and it fumbles out of bounds. Let’s say it was two guys, you want to save it for that if you can. So even if you really believe it’s off of Mike, you’re going to call it that time just to see what the video says. It might say something different than what your naked eye saw.”

“But I do like the system. The one thing that I personally would like to see is that if officials could re-officiate the plays. Let’s say you and I are going for a loose ball, and you get there before me, which is probably predictable based on your speed versus my speed, and then I grab you, and it’s clearly a foul, it’s not called in the game, not clear to them at the time, but upon review it’s a foul.”

“And then it ends up going off of you as well. I do believe you should be able to re-officiate that scenario, so that it’s like, ‘yes it did go off of you, but Lamont grabbed your whole arm, that’s why you didn’t get the ball.’ That would be the one thing I would like to see changed, it’s what they do in the NBA. And in the NBA, the vast majority of reviews that they ask for, the challenges the coaches ask for, are to do with fouls more than anything.”

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